


An Inspector Calls

by helsinkibaby



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers for Season Four, The Six Thatchers missing scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 08:39:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9227030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Woken by a knock at the door, Molly knows that it can't be good news.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So when watching "The Six Thatchers", my first thought after the death scene was, "Who's going to tell Molly?" With my shipper goggles on, Lestrade was the obvious answer and I told myself someone would write the fic. I was still thinking about it the next day and realised that that someone was probably going to be me because I couldn't get the idea out of my head. And here we are!

Molly had sworn she wouldn't fall asleep, but when a knock on the door made her start, had her sitting bolt upright on the couch, she had to admit that she'd fallen into a light doze. Automatically, she glanced at the baby monitor on the table, thankful that whoever it was had sense enough not to ring the doorbell at a time when a baby should, by all rights, be sleeping. The knock came again then, light but insistent, and Molly stood on suddenly shaky legs to answer it because she'd just realised something. 

This was John and Mary's house. If either of them were at the door, they wouldn't knock. They'd use their key. 

It couldn't be Sherlock either, because he was with John and Mary. If they'd sent him here, they'd have given him one of their keys. And if they hadn't, it was Sherlock. He'd have picked the bloody lock. He might have even picked it anyway, even with a key in his pocket, just to prove he could. 

Molly felt very cold all of a sudden, her fingers fumbling with the locks and when she pulled open the door to look into the very serious, very drawn face of Greg Lestrade, she felt even colder, her usual impulse to smile when she saw him very, very far away. 

"Molly-"

That one word was all he had to say and she knew.

"Who?" 

She stepped back to let him in as she spoke and he sighed as he stepped past her, waited until she closed and locked the door again to speak. 

"Mary." 

She caught her sob with her hand but she couldn't do anything about the tears that flooded her eyes. Greg didn't blink, didn't hesitate, just closed any distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. Hers went around his waist as she buried her face in his chest and neither of them said anything for what seemed like a very long time. 

Eventually she lifted her head with an embarrassingly loud sniff and he gave her a forced smile as he stepped back, but still left one hand on her shoulder. "How?" she asked as she pulled the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand, used it to wipe her eyes. 

"C'mon," he said, tilting his head towards the couch. "Let's sit, yeah?" 

He sat down beside her, close enough to touch, close enough that she could almost feel the heat of his body against hers. He told her everything, as much as he knew, as much as he'd seen and his own eyes were none too dry when he'd finished. Her sleeve, meanwhile, was throughly saturated and the other one well on its way to being so. 

"I told John I'd tell you," Greg finished. "Said not to worry about Rosie, we'll stay until... well, until." Molly nodded, already counting how many hours it would be before she could ring in sick. Not something she liked doing on short notice but then, not exactly a lie. "Will Mrs Hudson be able to-"

He stopped talking at the stricken look on her face. "She's in Corfu until Saturday... someone's going to have to tell her, we can't let her come home without knowing... but then, we can't ruin her holiday either..." Fresh tears began to roll down Molly's cheeks and Greg shook his head but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a piercing cry from the baby monitor. They both looked at it for a moment and when a second cry followed the first, Molly made to stand but Greg was quicker. 

"I'll go," he said gently and his hand dropped to Molly's shoulder again, squeezed gently. 

Molly watched him go, covered her face with her hands and tried to breathe slowly, concentrating hard on the pattern of her breath, pausing between inhales and exhales, trying not to picture all the times she'd sat with Mary on this very couch, all the laughter and conversations and cooing over Rosie. It was too hard to believe she'd never have that again, was easier to concentrate on Greg's voice coming through the baby monitor. 

At least it was until it stopped. 

For a second, she thought that Rosie had stopped crying, that Greg had stopped talking. Then she realised that the little red light had disappeared from the baby monitor, which meant, if she remembered Mary's instructions correctly (because it had been Mary who was good with technology: John barely knew how to turn the monitor on and didn't always remember that either) that the main unit in the nursery had been switched off, was no longer broadcasting its signal. 

And by the time she realised that, Greg was standing in front of her, Rosie snuggled up against his shoulder, a pink blanket draped haphazardly around her body. She felt her jaw drop a little as she looked up at him and he shrugged the shoulder the baby wasn't leaning against. "Someone needed a cuddle," he said as he sat back down beside Molly. 

She shook her head but he didn't hand the baby over. "You can't... Mary doesn't bring her back down here once she's put her to sleep..." The realisation that Mary would never again raise that objection made a lump rise in her throat and she pressed her lips together. 

"Yeah, well..." Greg's voice was soft, sounding almost like he was speaking to himself, rather than her. "Who said I was talking about either of you?" 

His eyes were downcast, fixed on the top of Rosie's head and the baby stared up at him with wide eyes and grinned. Greg blinked, a half laugh of obvious surprise coming to his lips as he smiled back and somehow, for a second, Molly found herself smiling too. 

Then she thought of Rosie growing up without her mum, thought of Mary and all she was never going to see and the tears came again. 

"It's just not fair," she whispered, pressing a fist to her lips and Greg's answer came in a sigh as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He pulled her against him, although he didn't have to pull too hard; she went willingly, let her head fall against his shoulder, let her finger find Rosie's hand. The baby grabbed it, held on tightly and Greg's hand squeezed her shoulder as she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head. 

"Is this where you tell me it's going to be all right?" she asked, even if she knew it wasn't, because it wasn't all right, might never be again. 

"Can't," he said simply. Even now, he wouldn't lie to her and there were no words to describe how much she valued that. "This is all I've got." 

She nodded against his shoulder and closed her eyes and in that moment, she let herself believe that that was enough. 

Funny thing was, for that moment, for those long moments that they sat there, waiting for the baby to fall back asleep, it was more than enough. 

In fact, it was everything.


End file.
